Kmart Automatic Door Fractures Woman’s Ribs

Automatic doors in one West Virginia Kmart went haywire, attacking a customer.

“Margaret Chrislip was visiting the store Feb. 23, 2006, when the automatic doors she was going through malfunctioned, struck her and caused her to fall.” The door fractured her ribs, among other things. She’s suing for “compensatory damages from Kmart and Boley as well as pre- and post-judgment interest, attorney fees and further and general relief.”

Personally, I think that the sensor technology is fundamentally flawed. About 75% of the time, these motion sensor doors fail to open for me at all. I’ve actually had a few close on me as I was walking through, although each reopened when they encountered resistance and I wasn’t knocked down or injured (only annoyed).

I’ve literally had to wait to follow someone else into the store because the doors don’t detect me. Several of my friends have encountered the same thing…whatever those sensors are looking for, some people consistently just don’t show up. Bringing a cart in with you seems to help; I guess metal reflects whatever they’re sensing.

The old pressure pad doors were more failure-prone, but they failed safe…they just wouldn’t open at all.

A few days ago I pushed a shopping cart into the exit set of doors at a Wal-Mart, and the doors clamped tight on the shopping cart where I had to just abandon it. I was thinking to myself “holy crap, that could have been a person”.

I always wave my hand in front of me as I approach a door to make sure it activates as soon as possible. I hate stopping mid-stride because the store opted to set a delay for when the door opens or sensitivity of the IR detector in a mis-guided attempt to prevent the speedy exits of shoplifters.

my mom has the door problem too. She has to wave or else the doors don’t see her. Sometimes, I walk into them because I’m in a hurry and assume the door will open and it doesn’t, there’s a delay, or it does it very slowly.

A lot of the time, I hate lawsuits. But this one seems okay. Those doors are supposed to be specifically designed not to hurt people.

I was going into a toronto subway car once, and the doors closed on my arms. Turns out actual humans close the doors, and the actual human didn’t see me right behind my friend and shut the door. It wasn’t obvious that the door would have let up on me either – I managed to yank my arms out but I got some scrapes on them. It definitely wasn’t like an elevator, which would have immediately reversed when those big black things hit.

There’s nothing l ike missing the second to last subway train, only to have to get onto the last subway train and miraculously reuinite with your friends somehow….

Did the door itself fracture her ribs, or did they fracture when she fell? Yes, the door hit her, but it’s a bit different if her ribs broke when she fell (that would probably mean the doors didn’t hit her as hard as it sounds like.)